Mantle Convection Simulation with a Hybrid Radial Basis Function/Chebyshev Pseudospectral Method

Simulation of isoviscous Mantle Convection (3-D thermal convection in a spherical shell) at Ra=10**6. isosurfaces of the residual temperature $\delta T = T(r,\theta,\lambda) - \langle T(r)\rangle$, where $\langle\;\rangle$ denotes averaging over a spherical surface. Yellow isosurface corresponds to $\delta T = 0.1$ and indicates upwelling. Blue isosurface corresponds to $\delta T = -0.1$ and indicates downwelling. The red solid sphere shows the inner boundary of the 3D shell corresponding to the core. The inner shell boundary is held at a fixed temperature of $T=1$ for all time, while the outer shell is held fixed at $T=0$. This is an example of Rayleigh-B\'enard convection at infinite Prandtl number.

Please see the paper:

G.B. Wright, N. Flyer, and D.A. Yuen. A hybrid radial basis function - pseudospectral method for thermal convection in a 3D spherical shell. Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 11 (2010), Q07003.

for details on the computational method.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• thermal convection

[Zacsta]

Absolutely stunning. Mantle convection was the most exciting concept for me in my first year of introductory geoscience. Though I'm not continuing my geoscience studies, I'll be majoring in mathematics, so maybe one day I could still work on such a neat topic.

[rakeshk123]

Beautiful!! 

[cbyerley]

I saw the person who made this explain the incredible amount of math and thinking it took to produce this. Very cool!